Faith in action

Sixth Mount Zion Baptist freely gives gifts to the community in latest outreach

9/30/2016, 7:57 p.m.

Sixth Mount Zion Pastor Tyrone Nelson, center, adds household items to an array of goods, clothing and food
that were given away last Sunday by the congregation in Jackson Ward.
Photos by James Haskins/Richmond Free Press

More than 1,200 people packed First Baptist Church of South Richmond’s new satellite building in Chesterfield County last Sunday to worship to the beat of the drum line from Virginia Union University.

Below, volunteers, from left, Randy
Thomas, James Nelson, Harold Hockaday, Derrick Isler,
Richard Burwell, Judith Wansley and Charlie Booker work
to repair the steps and walkway outside the Highland
Springs home of an elderly person.

The pastors, Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones and his son, Dr. Derik E. Jones, led a ribbon-cutting around 10 a.m. to formally open the second location of the church.

First Baptist Church of South Richmond is one of the city’s oldest African-American churches, whose founding dates to 1821 in what was the Manchester community in Chesterfield County at the time, but which is now the city’s South Side.

To mark the opening, the church held a single combined service for both its Richmond and county congregations in the new space. It took nearly an hour to seat all the people who came to celebrate the opening of the $6 million building that took about 30 months to build.

The new building in the 6200 block of Iron Bridge Road is a multipurpose space. It will serve as a sanctuary until an additional structure is added in the future, officials said.